John 3:22-36: It's All About Jesus

John 3:22-36: It’s All about Jesus

This morning, we’re going to continue our series going through the Gospel of John passage by passage. And our passage this morning takes us back to what’s probably the central emphasis of our church. If our church stood for one idea, this would probably be it. And that idea is that it’s all about Jesus. Now that doesn’t sound like a very complicated idea; it’s actually quite simple—definitely not rocket science. And yet, it’s so easy to forget that it’s all about Jesus and live as though it’s all about us. 

I remember hearing about something that happened during a basketball game between the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks back in 1994, where a star player named Scottie Pippen conducted himself in a very disappointing way. It was game three of the semifinals, and it was the very end of the game with only 1.8 seconds left on the clock. Not only that, but the score was tied between the Bulls and the Knicks at 102-102. The Kicks had staged a remarkable fourth-quarter comeback, overcoming a 22-point deficit, but the Bulls now had possession of the ball. The Bulls coach, Phil Jackson, designed a play in which Scottie Pippen would get the ball and then pass it to another Bulls player, who would then take the game-winning shot. But Pippen didn’t like that idea. He wanted to be the one to take the game-winning shot. So he actually just sat down and refused to play. Even when his team members tried to get him to come back out, he wouldn’t budge. So Phil Jackson had to send out another player to replace him and the plan worked like a charm and Bulls won the game 104-102 over the Knicks. But I just can’t get over the attitude Scottie Pippen had. Clearly, he thought the game was all about him. 

And even though we may not express that “it’s all about us” mentality quite as directly as Scottie Pippen, it’s very easy for us to forget the simple truth that it’s not about us but is in fact all about Jesus. And we find a wonderful reminder of that in our main text this morning. So please turn with me to John chapter 3. If you’re using the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 737. 

John 3:22-36: “After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized (for John had not yet been put in prison). Now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification. And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him." John answered, "A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.' The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease." He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

So apparently in this text, Jesus’ popularity was growing, and some of John’s followers are actually jealous on John’s behalf. In verse 26, they’re acting as if some kind of rivalry exists between John and Jesus. They complain to John that Jesus is also baptizing people and everyone’s going to him. So John has to remind them that that’s what’s supposed to happen. And like we said, the central thrust of what he says is that it’s about Jesus. That’s the main idea of our text. And this text gives us two ways we should respond to the fact that it’s all about Jesus: Number one, living a life with Jesus at the center and, number two, sharing a message with Jesus at the center. Living a life with Jesus at the center and sharing a message with Jesus at the center.

Living a Life with Jesus at the Center 

So first, living a life with Jesus at the center. Look again at what John says. Verses 27-30: “John answered, "A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.' The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” So in other words, John’s saying to his followers, “Haven’t you been listening to me at all?  This is exactly what I’ve been saying is supposed to happen.  My mission isn’t to make a name for myself but to prepare the way for Jesus.”

And I love the illustration he uses in verse 29 with the bride and the groom. In a wedding, the bride belongs to the groom. She doesn’t belong to anyone else. She doesn’t belong to the best man. The groom is the person she’s marrying. I mean, think about how messed up it would be if the best man tried to make a move on the bride during the wedding. You don’t do that. That’s like the ultimate man code violation. And in the same way, John’s saying, the crowds belong to Jesus. Jesus is the groom, the crowds are the bride, and John himself is just the best man that rejoices with the groom at his wedding. So it’s not even like John’s begrudgingly letting Jesus take center stage. No, he’s happy to do it. As he says at the end of verse 29, “this joy of mine is now complete.” Then he says, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Another translation says, “He must become greater; I must become less.”  

And that’s the attitude every Christian leader needs to have, that Jesus would become greater and that the leader himself would become less. Unfortunately, it seems as though the celebrity culture of Hollywood has found its way into a lot of churches. If a pastor’s exceptionally gifted at preaching, people will often make him into a kind of celebrity—looking to him rather than looking to God. But this passage teaches us that there should be no celebrity pastors. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with certain pastors being used by God exceptional ways, but we have to be careful that we never follow any man the same way we follow Jesus. Listen to me: I will let you down. Other people will let you down. Jesus is the only one who’ll never let you down. 

Not only that, but this church—Redeeming Grace Church—belongs to Jesus. It doesn’t belong to me or any other person. That’s one reason why once we get fully started up around here, we intend to have more than one pastor leading the church. First of all, that’s what we see modeled in the Bible—leadership being shared among several pastors. And also, that kind of a model reminds us that our church doesn’t belong to anyone but Jesus. Jesus is Lord of the church. Just this past week, I heard about something a local pastor in the South Hills did that I really admire him for. He came to the conclusion that his spiritual gifting didn’t match the lead pastor position he was in, and so he voluntarily turned in his resignation so that the church could move forward more effectively. He basically said he would lead the church for nine more months in order to give the church time to find another pastor and to give himself time to find another job—hopefully one that’s more in line with his gifting. And I admire that a lot, because it shows he has the same mentality as John here in our text. He understands that it’s not about him, it’s about Jesus.  

And while most Christians aren’t pastors, I think we would all do well to remember this lesson with regard to ourselves. Not only is it not about the pastor, it’s also not about you. So often, we think way too much about our own popularity and whether people are noticing us. We want people to think highly of us and pay attention to us. I mean, for those of you who use Facebook, can you honestly say you’ve never looked back at something you’ve posted on Facebook and felt some kind of emotional response based on how many “likes” you got with your post? If you got a lot of “likes” you feel elated, and if you didn’t get so many “likes” you feel a little depressed. I bet a lot of you have done that just in the past 24 hours. And why is that? Well, it’s because we want people to notice us. That’s why we need to reminded over and over again that the purpose of our lives isn’t to make ourselves famous but to make Jesus famous. 

And if we’re really trying to use our lives to make Jesus famous, we’ll be content serve Jesus in obscurity. We’ll want to serve Jesus even if we never get any public recognition for what we do. You know, I suspect that the people who will receive the greatest rewards in heaven won’t necessarily be people like Billy Graham who led hundreds of thousands of people to the Lord through his evangelistic crusades.  They’ll be housewives who faithfully served the Lord by caring for their family.  They’ll be guys who never graduated high school but faithfully cut the church lawn and trimmed the bushes even though they never gained any recognition.  They’ll be couples who didn’t have any children in the nursery but served in the nursery anyway—relatively unnoticed—in order to be a blessing to other families in the church. They’ll be pastors in Third World countries who worked manual labor jobs 70 hours a week so they could use what little remaining energy they had to pastor a church of 10 people.  There are countless Christians who won’t have any buildings named after them or Wikipedia articles written about them but will be called great in heaven because they were content to serve in obscurity.  

You know what ministry we have the greatest need for here at Redeeming Grace Church? While it’s true that we’re profoundly grateful for everyone who serves in every capacity, the ministry we have the greatest need for in order to advance our mission is people who will take the initiative to make disciples. That means they take the initiative to build relationships with non-Christians in order to lead them to Jesus, and they also take the initiative to serve as personal mentors for Christians who are younger in the faith. That’s what we need in this church more than anything: an army of people who quietly work behind the scenes, without any recognition or any applause, to make disciples of other people—and who then train those people to make even more disciples. All of the other ministries of this church exist in order to make that happen. That’s why I preach, that’s why we’re in the process of starting up Community Groups, that’s why we do everything we do: to equip so-called “ordinary” Christians to be disciple-makers. But that requires that we focus our attention on making Jesus famous rather than ourselves. Because disciple-making is often not a glamorous thing. Sometimes it is, but it’s also often a frustrating thing and a messy thing. That’s why we have to keep reminding ourselves that it’s all about Jesus.

Sharing a Message with Jesus at the Center

In addition, not only does John’s example in our main text remind us to live a life with Jesus at the center, it also reminds us to share a message with Jesus at the center. That’s our second point: Sharing a message with Jesus at the center. Now, in a few moments we’ll read the rest of what John says and observe how Jesus is at the very center of his message. But first, I’d like to talk about why it’s so important for you to hear what I’m about to say. It’s because, in many churches, Jesus is unfortunately not at the center of their message. 

A prominent Notre Dame scholar and sociologist named Christian Smith did some pretty substantial research and came up with a term to describe the basic message of many churches in America, particularly as youth in the church have perceive it. He called it “Moral Therapeutic Deism” or MTD for short. Moral Therapeutic Deism. Now, that phrase may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but I promise, it’s not that complicated. 

First this message is “moral.” It approaches life in a moralistic way. It teaches that the central feature of a good and happy life is simply being a moral person—being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, and responsible. Basically, it substitutes morality for Jesus. Rather than directing our gaze toward Jesus and what Jesus has done on the cross for our salvation and the subsequent grace Jesus provides to make us moral people, this message directs our attention to morality all on its own. And that’s a big problem…because that’s not Christianity. The reason we call Christianity “Christianity” is because it’s about Christ, not just about morality. 

Also, Moral Therapeutic Deism is called what it’s called because of what the second word points to: its therapeutic emphasis. This message is therapeutic because it teaches that life is centrally about feeling good about ourselves—feeling happy and secure and at peace with where we are. Don’t worry about discussing sin. That’s not very uplifting or enjoyable to talk about. And definitely don’t mention anything about God’s judgment. That was so 500 years ago. We just need to talk about things that help us feel better about ourselves and increase our self-esteem. That’s what they’re basically saying. So, again we see that the emphasis of this message is clearly on ourselves rather than on Jesus. 

And lastly, Moral Therapeutic Deism teaches a form of Deism. Deism is the belief in a god who may exist and may have created the world and may have laid out a general moral system for the world, but he doesn’t really get involved beyond that. He’s definitely not actively involved in our lives, especially not in the parts of our lives that we don’t want him to be involved in. Sure he’ll help us when we need help, but other than that, he kind of minds his own business and keeps a comfortable distance. That way we can live the way we want to live and choose which rules we want to follow without too much interference. It kind of reminds me of the way a few of the guys on my dorm at college related to their parents. They really liked getting money from their parents, but they didn’t really like their parents giving them an opinion about how they should live their lives. It seemed like they just wanted their parents to act like a vending machine and regularly give them money so they could eat out seven days a week, but that’s as far as the relationship needed to go. And, according to this theory of Moral Therapeutic Deism, that’s the way many people approach God. And yet again, you get the idea here that life is really all about us rather than being all about Jesus. 

But the Bible paints a radically different picture of reality. It tells us that God actually does care about the way we live—he cares a lot. And because we’ve rebelled against him and lived sinfully, the Bible says we’ve alienated ourselves from God and brought upon ourselves a sentence of condemnation. But thankfully, the story of the Bible doesn’t end there. The vast majority of the Bible is about God progressively working to save us from our sinful condition. And the way God does that can be summed up in one word: Jesus. Jesus is at the very center of God’s rescue plan. 

Look what John says about Jesus here in the second portion of our main text, verses 31-36. And as I read this passage, let’s try to pick out all of the characteristics of Jesus that we see.  Beginning in verse 31, “He who comes from above is above all.” So, right there we see that Jesus is from heaven—he “comes from above”—and he’s superior to everyone and everything else—he’s “above all.” Then it continues, “He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard.” So when Jesus speaks, he’s speaking as an eyewitness of heavenly realities. “…yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.” So by accepting the words of Jesus, we’re actually accepting the words of God himself. “For he whom God has sent utters the words of God.” Again, Jesus acts as God’s messenger. “…for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.” So Jesus has authority over everything in this entire universe. 

Then look at the last verse. This verse is the climax of everything John’s been saying. And even though it’s quite direct, he says it without hesitation or apology. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” You know, some people say the Bible’s really difficult to understand—so difficult in fact that it’s arrogant to claim that we have the correct interpretation.  However, even though some passages of the Bible certainly are more difficult to understand than others, this verse seems pretty simple to me. You don’t have to know Greek to understand what this verse means. It means exactly what it says: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” How else do you interpret that? Interestingly, believing in Jesus and obeying Jesus are used interchangeably here, and that obedient belief in Jesus is makes the difference between having “eternal life” in heaven or experiencing “the wrath of God” in hell. It’s really that simple. Jesus is the only way to God.

Conclusion

That’s why it’s so important for us to keep Jesus at the center of everything. That’s why we want to live our lives with Jesus at the center and share a message with Jesus at the center. Everything God wants to do in us and for us comes through Jesus. You know, we’ve said from the very beginning of starting this church that the reason we want to start Redeeming Grace Church is because this area needs a church that’s explicitly gospel-centered—a church that recognizes the gospel message—the message of Jesus—as central for absolutely everything. So we worship God in light of the gospel, recognizing that it’s the clearest window we have to who God is. It shows us God’s awe-inspiring love and justice and power with unparalleled clarity. We also view our identity in light of the gospel, joyfully remembering that, as Christians, we are a people who have been cleansed of our sins, made new from the inside out, and adopted through Jesus as God’s sons and daughters. We also relate to each other in light of the gospel, showing each other the same love, generosity, patience, and forgiveness that God has so richly shown us through Jesus. And finally, we approach our mission in light of the gospel, understanding that the most fundamental need that the people of our city have is for a saving relationship with Jesus that will make a difference for eternity. So all of that is what we mean when we say that we’re a gospel-centered or Jesus-centered church. He’s the lens through which we view everything else. 

And our vision in starting this church is exactly what it seems John’s vision was here in our main text. We want to do everything we can to make Jesus famous in this community. That’s our vision. And we want to pour ourselves out—without holding anything back—in an effort to make that happen. We want to use our time, our health, our money, and everything else God’s entrusted to us so that Jesus can be famous in this community. When I’m in the nursing home living out my final days, I want to look back on my life and know that my life counted for something. I want to have something to look back on that really matters. Who cares how much money I earned? Who cares what my job title ended up being? I want my life to really count for something. And since the Bible says it’s all about Jesus, what higher ambition could I have for my life than making Jesus famous?